The crack of the bat. “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” Cheers. Boos. Heckles. “Beer here!” Baseball, it’s a game of sounds.

But Comerica Park will be just a little quieter when the Tigers return home Friday night.

It’ll be the first Tigers home game since Charley Marcuse was fired from his job as the popular or polarizing — depends who you ask — Singing Hot Dog Man.

And he’s still coming to grips with that.

“It’s gonna be very weird. I’ll sort of have the mentality as if they’re away. So it’ll be weird knowing they’re here,” Marcuse said Thursday in his first interview with The Detroit News since he was let go last Friday.

“It’ll probably take a little while for it really to hit home.

“I hope that there’s some way to come back.”

Marcuse got the ax from the Tigers’ concession vendor, Sportservice, following a 10-minute meeting with management last week. The Tigers’ vendors are unionized, and Marcuse has filed a grievance. It’s up to Sportservice to schedule the meeting.

Sportservice wouldn’t comment on the specific reason behind Marcuse being let go, though sources say it wasn’t because of his singing.

Think about it: If it was the singing, it wouldn’t have taken 15 years to get rid of him.

There are rumblings the real reason was ketchup — or Marcuse’s disdain for it. Marcuse, at the ballpark and on Twitter, has been a strong crusader for only putting mustard on a frank. And some fans thought he got combative when they asked for ketchup. There were complaints filed.